At the request of my friend Lord Russell of Killowen, then
Attorney General, I delivered this lecture at the Morley Hall, Hackney,
on December 13th, 1893. I had previously delivered it in the city of
York at the request of some of my constituents. I feel that some apology
is required for its reproduction in a more permanent form, which apology
I most respectfully tender to all who may read this little book.

F. L.

THE LAW AND LAWYERS OF "PICKWICK."

Sir CHARLES RUSSELL: I stand but for a single instant between you and our
friend, Mr. Lockwood. He needs no introduction here; but I am sure I may
in your name bid him a hearty welcome.

Mr. FRANK LOCKWOOD: Mr. Attorney General, Ladies and Gentlemen It is
some little time ago that I was first asked whether I was prepared to
deliver a lecture. Now I am bound at the outset to confess to you that
lecturing has been and is very little in my way. I spent some three
years of my life at the University in avoiding lectures. But it came
about that in the constituency which I have the honour to represent, it
was suggested to me that it was necessary for me to give a lecture, and
it was further explained to me that it did not really very much matter as
to what I lectured about. I am bound to say there was a very great charm
to me in the idea of lecturing my constituents. I know it does sometimes
occur that constituents lecture their representatives, especially in
Scotland, and I was anxious, if I might, to have an opportunity of
lecturing those who had so many opportunities of reading, no doubt very
useful lectures to me. But the difficulty was to find a subject. My own
profession suggested itself to me as a fit topic for a lecture, but
unfortunately my profession is not a popular one. I do not know how it
is, but you never find a lawyer introduced either into a play or into a
three volume novel except for the purpose of exposing him as a scoundrel
in the one, and having him kicked in the third act in the other. I do
not know how it is, but so it is. All the heroes of fiction either in
the drama or in the novel are found in the ranks no, not in the ranks of
the army, but in the officers of the army, or in the clergy. It is so in
novels, it is so in dramas; Mr. Attorney General, I believe it is so in
real life.

And so, looking about for a subject, being reminded, as I was, that the
subject of the law was unpopular, I turned as I have often done in the
hour of trouble I turned to my Dickens, and there I found that at any
rate in Dickens we have a great literary man who has been impartial in
his treatment of lawyers. He has seen both the good and the bad in them,
and it occurred to me that my lecture might take the form of dealing with
the lawyers of Dickens. I soon found that was too great a subject to be
dealt with within the short space which could be accorded to any
reasonable lecturer by any reasonable audience. I found that the novels
of Dickens abounded with lawyers, to use a perhaps apt expression. Having
regard to my profession, they fairly bristled with them, and so I
determined to take the lawyers of one of his books; and I chose as that
book "Pickwick"; and I chose as my title "The Law and the Lawyers of
'Pickwick.'"

Ladies and gentlemen, it is an extraordinary thing when we look at this
book, when we reflect that it contains within its pages no less than
three hundred and sixty characters, all drawn vividly and sharply, all
expressing different phases of human thought, and of human life, and
every one of them original; when we reflect that that book was written by
a young man of twenty three years of age... Continue reading book >>